For whatever reason, it’s often appealing (if not simply curiosity-inducing) to find out someone’s salary. With celebrities or athletes, it’s even more interesting because of how much they make. Some might call it silly for someone who plays a sport to get paid so much — after all, they’re just playing a game, right? Yet somehow, Alex Rodriguez (with the popularized baseball nickname A-Rod) achieved an average salary over ten years of $27.5 million.
Now, there’s no way that professional gamers are catching up to this. They’re just playing video games, right?
Well, in direct response to that question, no, no professional gamer is making anywhere close to $27.5 million a year. Then again, most baseball players aren’t, either. The average for a professional baseball player is under 5 million, which, of course, is nothing to scoff at.
The tricky thing with pro gamer salaries is that they are extremely difficult to discover. Many teams have not revealed their salaries and are not planning to. A few have revealed them, and they were not too shabby, with one of the revealed salaries for a team that is significantly less known than the top ten teams in the League of Legends Competitive Series (LCS) being up to $92,000 plus housing, food, and healthcare. This team, Ember, fell flat on its face and did not succeed in making it into the Competitive Series. For this reason, it may be safe to say that this salary may be much lower than some of the top tier teams pay their players, but we can’t know this as fact.
A recent so-called e-sports “industry source” revealed that the Korean professional player Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, widely considered to be the best League of Legends player in the world, was offered a salary of about $2.5 million. This source is unconfirmed, but if true, that would be the largest salary ever revealed for a League of Legends pro.
Pro players have multiple sources of income, which is something to be considered. Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg, a professional League of Legends player for Team Solo Mid (TSM), is estimated to make anywhere from $120,000-240,000 a year from streaming games alone. His salary on top of this may increase his yearly earnings greatly, especially since TSM has been a very successful organization, winning the 2015 LCS and making it to the world championship.
Some might think that these players are paid too much, while others might say they are not paid enough at all. Regardless, just like athletes, they provide entertaining viewership of a game at a competitive level that cannot be achieved by most players. They’ve certainly earned what they can get, but perhaps they will never know if they deserve more unless teams start being transparent with their salaries. However, revealing player salaries may also incite jealousy or rivalries within teams if some players get paid more than others. The issue is huge and convoluted, and most teams have opted not to reveal them for the time being. Perhaps this will change soon and we will get a firm grasp on exactly how much professional e-sports players are paid, but for now, we can only make our best guess.
Marco Omta is a sophomore studying music production. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Do you think e-gamers could make as much as athletes? Email Marco at mo183714@ohio.edu.
